Playing at revolution
Or how getting down on hands and knees to play with a child can give you a glimpse of a good future
“Hard times require furious dancing. Each of us is proof.” — Alice Walker
Prompt: Describe your vision of tomorrow.
Response: Children dance in the streets. They fear no harm. They know they belong to a community that cares for them. They are safe, joyful and free.
Several years ago, I co-taught a Nonviolent Civil Resistance course with artist and activist Andre Henry. We invited students to share a vision of tomorrow that inspires their work for social change. We were curious about describing the future in ways other people would find compelling, that they would want to co-create. I shared the above example, and then we opened up the conversation for others to share their insight.
As I heard the brilliant responses of students, bursting with thoughtful considerations of economic systems and political life, I remember feeling some embarrassment. Perhaps my vision was impractical. Maybe it was not serious enough.
Yet, years later, I see this vision as vital. Alongside abolition, decolonization, mutual aid, climate justice, power sharing, and other essential visions of tomorrow, play is a crucial component of any just future.
This has been wildly apparent while watching toddlers, children, youth, and young people and adults together in Gaza dancing the traditional Palestinian dabke. Refusing to bend and break under the crushing weight of empire and oppression, their movement is both a preservation of a distinguished culture and a proclamation of the Palestinian people’s rightful place in the world now and in the future.
For play’s sake, let me put it into poetry:
Amidst the rubble,
they leap and twirl,
boundless,
each smile a resolution,
each step an invitation:
here
where the soul swells
with dignity,
where oppression
is cast off like a heavy cloak,
where joy is unearthed
in spite of everything,
meet me.
It is often said that Palestinians love life, and it is certainly apparent when seeing Gazans at play. The preservation of play as a vital practice in the present moment — especially one as violent as this — is indeed about love of life. Play may not be perceived as practical in the immediate sense of preserving life, including providing people with the basic necessities of air, food, water, shelter. But it is absolutely essential in terms of preserving life’s meaning.
Play makes life worth living. It engenders delight, dignifying life as it recalls us to the simple pleasures of being human. The practice of play helps us keep our humanity intact amidst the most devastating forms of violence.
Violence is the opposite of creativity. Violence dehumanizes as it seeks to destroy delight, snuff out satisfaction, and render its victims numb to any experience of pleasure.
The practice of play helps us get out of the cycle of reactive violence by empowering our creativity. We learn to be human by playing.
Consider a time when you have seen children at play. There is a reason why play is the foundational way young children learn. It is all-absorbing. Children get into a flow-state, building entire imaginative worlds when they are playing. I see this in my two-year-old daughters, who find absolute delight in pretending to be animals, in dancing, in building towers and knocking them down. Their play is creatively generative and life-affirming. When I watch them – and especially when I join them – I am pulled into this way of being.
It’s worth noting that play is also a theological posture: it is a humble engagement with God in making the world more beautiful, more livable, more free. When we play we trust that delight is what the divine wants for us. We practice faith that the world that shall be won’t come about by our ceaseless striving — that our play matters as much, perhaps even more than, what we call “work.”
Play isn’t simply something to merely look forward to when “the strife is o’er, the battle done,” as the old hymn goes. Rather, play is prefigurative — that is, by doing it, we build the future that we want to inhabit. By playing, we gain clarity about what it is we are working toward.
Giving play a place of privilege in our vision of tomorrow is about is about keeping our humanity at the forefront as we contend for that good and just future in which we long to live.
You can bring play into your planning for change with this Beautiful Trouble deck of Strategy Cards. I get no money for saying this. I just thought you should know about this super fun resource!